I´ve been making my first PVC whistle (electrical tubing). One obstacle was making the fipple. I don´t own a lathe and I didn´t find any suitable round wood easily accsessible in any store. I went to a carpenter but it would become too expensive to to have it made. Then it hit me - drumsticks are made in all possible dimensions and a broad selection of woods (I choose maple). I know it may sound a bit sacrilege to deliberately cut a drumstick into pieces, but it works very well and from just one drumstick I have enough wood for several fipples!
Yeah, we americans are way off in our own little world trying to come up with better ways for things, why did they fill my head with this nonsense, i wish i was born in europe.
I use dowel rods for my fipples. I have now made 4 D whistles from CPVC pipe. I use 1/2 X 36" dowel rod. All I have to do is to sand it down a little to fit. This does not take very much. They would be a little softer than drum sticks. I will check with some drummer friends at the University, they are always breaking them. After all this, and using Guido’s web site, my fourth whistle is a good one. I have played this one for other people and they like it better than my Clarke Original and Meg. I cannot wait for next weekend to try again. Try dowel rods.
Another option for a fipple is to usesmaller pipe that fits snugly into the whistle bore. You can plug it with anything like blu-tack or even with toilet paper. Absolutely no sanding required. At least here in metric Europe it’s easy to find pipes that fit inside other pipes
Another advantage with this kind of “hollow fipple” application is that with this configuration you can test the notorious blu-tack-tweak on the go. (Just change the position of the plug to alter the size of the cavity under the windway.)
A dowel rod would be a stright round wood stick the same size its full length.
There are several ways they are made. A cheap way to down size one is with a steel washer with a hole the size of dowel that is needed. It works best if you start with a washer a little smaller than what is needed, than file the hole to the correct size making the hole sharp. Than put the washer on top of a vice or other larger hole to hold it in place. Than drive the dowel through the hole with a hammer. It may come out very smooth or rough. Depends on the size of each used and how sharp you made the hole.
Just a thought here, two methods of fashioning a fipple which will work regarless of the tubing diameter chosen are to use either polymer clay or cast polyester resin. Simply use a short section of the tubing you want to plug as the mold.
The polymer clay must be cured by baking. Once cooked properly it is similar in workablility to PVC pipe. It has the advantage of coming in lots of colors and they can be combined to make many designs in the plug.
The cast poly resin is a bit more expensive to get started but it makes a good fipple. You simply mix the resin with a few drops of catalyst and wait the prescribed hours for it to cure. Color can be added in many shades and the finished product is translucent.
In both cases it is wise to use some release agent in the mold so that the finished plugs just pop out after curing.
Both materials are widely available in hobby and craft shops.
Here in the UK the sizes are metric too. I use PVC overflow pipe. It comes in 15mm and 22mm internal diameter. So I can make high and low pipes. Fortunately it’s easy to get dowel rod in these sizes too.
I did once get a length of non-standard pipe - red, for smoke alarm installations. I too had the same trouble finding wood to fit. My solution was to get the next size larger in dowel and sand it to fit. It took AGES!
The fipple is still a little too large and won’t remove easily. I feel your pain.
